Website Available to Search for Ammonium Nitrate Facilities

Website Available to Search for Ammonium Nitrate Facilities

Firefighters at Goodfellow Air Force Base are trained to assist with emergencies in San Angelo involving dangerous hazardous materials.
They provide the equipment and manpower for large haz-mat incident response.
They demonstrated how they would respond to an accident after the State Fire Marshals Office launched a new website last week that shows where large amounts of ammonium nitrate are stored by zip code.

Texans can now find at the click of a button if ammonium nitrate is located in their town.

The chemical -- commonly used in fertilizer -- is not dangerous unless stored improperly, which was the case back in April at a fertilizer plant in West.

To find if ammonium nitrate is in your town, type in your zip code here.

The page was launched by the State Fire Marshals Office.

There is a storage facility here in San Angelo.

For security reasons, the website and the city will not reveal where the chemical is located, however, firefighters trained at the technical level at Goodfellow Air Force Base demonstrated that they're prepared if a hazardous material issue were to occur.

"Well I can't really talk about, specifically, that area, but what I can tell you is that working with our partners downtown San Angelo Fire Department whenever there is ever any type of hazardous materials incident, we can be requested through our mutual aid agreement," Goodfellow Air Force Base Assistant Fire Chief John Manera said.

While Manera could not comment on the safety of the storage facility holding the ammonium nitrate, Fire Marshal Ross Coleman said the building is inspected on a regular basis.

Manera says his crew goes above and beyond training requirements and works well with the fire department in the city. While San Angelo firefighters are trained to handle chemicals, they need Goodfellow's materials and extra manpower.

"We partner very well with San Angelo Fire Department, on other training exercises we would do well," Manera said. "Once they call us out we could respond to those locations and help them mitigate the incident."

The State Fire Marshals Office will begin meetings in December with local officials responsible for each facility in Texas to warn them of possible dangers.

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